The Congress of Roebuck
by Baaaaaaaacon
Summary: Cut off from the efforts of Shiroe and The Akihabara Round Table, tens of thousands of players find themselves trapped in The Land of Wen- Elder Tale's North American Server. Following the chaos of The Apocalypse, the guilds in the adventurer city of Roebuck begin to pick up the pieces to build a home in this new world… (Currently on hold due to schoolwork)
1. Roebuck Cathedral, Day 2

As Cabrera opened his eyes, he was almost blinded by the sunlight flooding into The Cathedral. Moaning as he dragged himself off of the alter, he tried to get his bearings; he swore that he had only been on the moon for a few minutes, but a couple hours must have passed if it was already light out. His clothes were in tatters and his entire inventory- aside from his longbow- had been looted. But that was to be expected. The apocalypse had changed a lot, but leaving equipped items on dead enemies was a longstanding tradition in PvP events. Who said chivalry was dead?

Standing up, Cabrera practiced hopping from leg to leg for second. Elves naturally had longer legs than humans, and he wasn't 6'1" in real life, so the extra height took some getting used to. Besides, it was only the first- well, second now- day that he was stuck in this game.

"Hell of a time to pull this stunt…" Cabrera grumbled to himself as the made his way to the exit. The devs knew that _The Toledo Border War _was a hugely popular PvP event each May. Why they chose today of all days to release this monster of an expansion was beyond him. Hell, they almost had to call off the raid before people realized that respawns were still active… Not that respawning was exactly a pleasant process, but hey, taking Toledo back from the Buckeyes was three-years coming. They weren't going to let a little 'apocalypse' stop them.

Crossing his fingers, Cabrera pulled open a menu to check the codex entry on the City of Toledo- sorry- 'Maumee' as it was called in-game. _"A Lander city located on the shores of Lake…" _Cabrera skipped to the bottom of the text box _"Exclusive trading rights in the city are granted to adventures hailing from Pontiac _(!) _following the dethroning of The Emperor of Maumee on 05/18/18 and the subsequent restoration of The Maumee Shogunate."_

"YES!" Cabrera dropped to his knees just short of the Cathedral's exit with a fist held high in the air. It took him a few moments to regain his composure.

His entire party had died during the raid, trying to hold off the Ohio- ugh, 'Columbus' players. In order to win the event (and the associated trading rights), all you had to do was defeat a raid boss (The Emperor) in the Royal Palace… Which would be easy, except that the would-be usurpers are only allowed to bring 24 players into the dungeon while the defenders (which ever since the event began had been Columbus Adventurers) could bring the whole damn state.

The end result was always a massive bloodbath between small armies of players at the entrance to the dungeon as a raid team tries to blitz through to the level boss. For the past three years, that bloodbath had gone in favour of Ohio's higher player count. But, with a lot of pre-planning, the element of surprise, and the massive confusion of The Apocalypse, they were -barely- able to scratch out their first win.

In all honesty, the city wasn't worth that much. Sure, it sold crafting supplies a bit below market value, but more than anything the players just wanted the prestige of calling it theirs. Although, if the game still set event dates based off of real-world time, it was going to be uncontestable for the next twelve years of in-game time. Not half bad for an operation that had almost failed before it begun.

Satisfied with his celebration, and eerily aware of the looks he was getting from some recently respawned Columbus Adventurers whom he may or may not have kited to death, the level-90 assassin stood up and, with a bit more swagger in his step, threw open the doors to leave The Cathedral.

Greeting him was the Adventurer City of Roebuck, built atop the crumbling, overgrown ruins of post-apocalyptic Chicago. The Cathedral itself was built on the real-life site of Adler Planetarium- so that once players respawned, they did so looking across the water at the city's disturbingly beautiful skyline. Which, he had to admit, looked damn impressive in first-person.

As Cabrera took his first steps down towards the city, he spun around to the sound of a familiar voice. "Hey Miggy, I wondered how long you were gonna be out of it."

Before he could come up with a response, Cabrera started cackling. "K," he forced out between laughs, "you look _nothing_ like that."

Facing him was a bleach-blond, blue-eyed, six-foot cleric wearing bright-white priest's robes with a few light pieces of steel armour thrown on for good measure- a far cry from the dwarf he had been playing with a few hours before, and a lot better looking than the lanky college-sophomore he knew in real life.

"Yeah, well…" Klauswitz chuckled. "Shockingly, both 'dirty blond' and 'human twig' aren't available as character options."

Cabrera smirked. All things considered, Klauswitz had made a pretty valid effort towards capturing his likeness; there were limits to what you could pull off in a character-select screen.

The two looked ridiculous standing next to each other. K was shining in the sun like some kind of pale-skinned white knight with a brand-new magic staff slung over his shoulder, whereas Cabrera was almost literally dragged out of a gutter. His brown-and-olive Ranger's Cloak was torn to shreds in the fight, showing off his tanned day-elf skin, and his prized longbow was barely in one piece.

Deciding it was time to start moving, Cabrera started down the steps. "So, I see you managed to scrape up a race-reset potion."

"Yeah, I kicked open The Company stores and stole a few character-reset potions." Their Guild- _The East Roebuck Company-_ was somewhat notorious for buying, crafting, or otherwise collecting huge stockpiles of rare items and selling them at ridiculously inflated prices; business was probably booming in the appearance potion market. "Kat'll probably grill me for it, but I'll pay her back somehow."

"I'm less worried about Kat than I am about our frontline…" Changes to any member's build would change the way the whole party fought.

"Well, I don't think it's too much of a change, I'm just more of a dodge-tank than an armour-tank." Klauswitz tried to reassure his party's tactician. "Heals ain't any stronger, but my mana pool's a bit deeper now. Combine that with the extra agility, and I might actually last longer on the front."

"Not against AoE you won't." Cabrera quipped. Their party already had a big problem with negating large Area-of Effect attacks, and losing armour on their primary healer wasn't going to help.

Klauswitz shrugged.

Cabrera sighed. "Oh well…" It couldn't really be helped; K couldn't stand being a dwarf, and everyone was tired of hearing him bitch about it. Sure, it was going to bite them next time they had to fight a raid boss with undodgeable AoE attacks, but with the current state of the game world, they weren't going to go picking fights with those anytime soon.

"At least now you'll be able to walk at the same pace as the rest of the party." Cabrera joked as he reached the bottom of the steps and started down the causeway to the city. "Where is everyone anyways? I half-expected a welcoming committee."

"Well, they'd all have been here if you hadn't spent so long dicking around the moon." K shot back playfully. "Last I heard, Renee was shopping around to fix up her broken gear, and I think that Chaco is going around with her; no need to ruin girls' night for them." K traded a smirk with Cabrera.

"As for the other two…" He continued on, "Pav just kinda ran off once she respawned. I didn't really ask what she was up to, but if I had to guess, I'd say she's out shopping too. She seemed a bit… uncomfortable… in her armour yesterday."

"-Well," Cabrera scoffed. "I don't blame her. I don't care how good that stats are, you'd never catch me wearing a corset and miniskirt into a fight."

"Speak for yourself." Klauswitz said with a laugh.

"I'm holding you to that." Cabrera chuckled. "Anyways, what about Chaucer? He was the first dead after you."

"He was hanging around at first, but Kat wanted him for something. I think there's some sorta guild leader meeting going on?" Klauswitz shrugged. "Hell if I know."

As if on-queue, the familiar xylophone chime of a telepathy call came in. "Speak of the devil…" Cabrera grunted, reaching out to hit the accept button. "What's up, Kat?"

"Well," chimed Katrina, their guild leader. "I'm just checking in on you, sleeping beauty. You've been out of it a looong time, and I just want to know that my boys are doing alright."

"Right…" Miguel rolled his eyes for Klauswitz's benefit before turning his attention back to the call. Kat wouldn't waste her time on a social call; she wanted something from him, and the only reason she would be this coy about it was because someone else was in earshot. Around outsiders she threw on this childish demeanor, but everyone in The Company knew that the girl would make Machiavelli blush.

Kat paused for a few seconds and then giggled childishly as if he had said something funny. _Definitely acting for an audience._ _She's probably still in that guild leader meeting- but why the hell are you calling me?_

"Well Miggy-" she continued, apparently guessing his thoughts. "The other guild leaders and I wanted to know about what dying is like, and since you seemed to spend a looong time respawning, I thought you'd have the most to share…"

_Bullshit, you wanted me so that you could censor what I said for the other guild leaders._ "I'm with K now." He told Kat. "He'll fact-check everything I say… If Chaucer's with you, I'm sure he'll do the same."

Klauswitz gave a silent thumbs-up in acknowledgement, and Katrina game a quiet "Mm-Hmm" over the call.

"The dying itself isn't actually so bad…" Klauswitz raised a questioning eyebrow in response. "Oh, shut up you wuss." He intentionally said over the call.

"Once you're dead and your body disappears from the environment, you end up reliving a chunk of your memories." K was giving him a thumbs-up to confirm he was on the right track. "I'm guessing that the reason I was dead so long was just because I had a pretty big segment to push through."

Kat repeated that part without any meaningful edits.

Miguel looked up and tried to find the words to explain what had been bothering him, "The memories didn't seem totally intact though." He looked over at K for confirmation. "Some parts of the memories were blurry. Names, faces, colors… There were parts of the story that I don't think I'd forget that seemed… A bit muddied."

"Can you be more specific?" Kat asked.

"… I can't remember what car I drive." He lied.

Kat went quiet for a few seconds. "Go on…"

Miguel took that to mean that she wanted to keep the whole memory information to herself for the time being. "I'm not really sure how the memories that you relive are chosen, but what I relived wasn't exactly my proudest moment." Klauswitz started nodding furiously in agreement. "K's backing me up on that one."

Katrina relayed that to the other guild leaders, seemingly thankful that she had some less controversial information to share.

"-And then I was on the moon."

"What?" Kat slipped out of her acting bubble for a moment.

"Chaucer didn't tell you that?"

"What? No…"

"K's nodding so I'm sure it wasn't just me." Miguel looked up as if seeing the moon would help him describe it. "The location came up as The Sea of Tranquility, and it was on a grey, cratered beach looking up at Earth. That's three reasons for it to be The Moon, right?" The silence over the call told him that Kat wasn't convinced. "Isn't the pre-release testing server on the moon? It's not _totally_ unreasonable."

"I'll… uh…" From the tone of her voice, Miguel could tell that Kat was frustrated and trying to build her façade back up. "Okay,*ahem* well if that's all Miggy, I think we have enough info."

Cabrera sighed, she was back in the groove. "Nope, that's pretty much it… Sorry if you were expecting more."

"Okay, Miggy." She let out a somewhat forced giggle. "See you at the guild hall at dinner."

"That's an order isn't it?"

"Yep!" Kat was now in maximum-overdrive little girl mode. "Love you Miggy!"

Cabrera hung up and audibly winced.

"Haha, I know what that was about." K had a shiteating grin a mile wide.

"Fuck off, K."

"Dude, how many times do I have to tell you that she's over it?"

"I said fuck off."

Klauswitz shrugged. "Alright, alright. Just sayin' that you seem really guilty over what's probably gonna go down as the most painless, mutual breakup in the history of ever." K's grin somehow got wider as something dawned on him. "Say… You didn't spend the last few hours in a greatest-hits montage of _that _did you?"

Miguel desperately hoped that he wasn't capable of blushing in this game, otherwise his face would be beet-red. "Are you done?" He asked, picking up speed to discourage conversation.

Klauswitz licked his lips and picked up the pace. "Yeah, yeah, I'm done." Klauswitz knew twhen Miguel's patience was about to expire. "When are we due back at the Guild Hall?"

"Dinner."

"Think they know how to cook yet?"

"I'm going to assume no..."

K smirked. He was getting happier about his Chef subclass by the minute. "Alright, I'll stock us up on groceries while you get all prettied up." He shot Cabrera a wink as he took off into the city. "How do you feel about paella tonight?"

"I feel like you're going to burn it again!" He shouted at K's back as he disappeared into the city. Now alone, Cabrera turned to face the Guild Hall. It was about half a mile away- at the mouth of the Chicago River.

As he started the walk down what used to be Lake Shore Drive, he was faced with rows on rows of adventurers who were still in shock from yesterday. They were all huddled in small groups, picking at scraps of garbage menu-food and whispering about the real world. Some of them sobbed as they told stories about their families, some of them whispered about how they had been tricked into buying the expansion, and others sat in total silence staring off as if the real world lay on the other side of the Lake.

Miguel scoffed and started to pick up speed. He didn't know if it was even possible to get out of this game, but frankly he didn't care. This was still Elder Tale- still a game- and goddammit, this was a game he was going to win. If there was a way out, he was going to find it. If there was a prize to be had, he was going to take it. And if they were going to be stuck like this forever- well- he just wasn't willing to accept that option.

'I'll find a way or make one' had always been The Company's motto. Miguel decided that it was about time to start living by it.


	2. Roebuck Forges, Day 2

It just before four-o-clock on the second day since the apocalypse, and Roebuck's public forges were the quietest they had been since the game's release. Normally this was the busiest part of the city, with scores of players scrambling to repair their gear, and small armies of blacksmiths trying to negotiate the highest prices for repairs. Today, however, it was mostly silent. With the exception of some veteran players repairing their gear from yesterday's PvP brawl, the forges were empty- if no players were venturing outside the city, then no arms or armour had to be repaired.

One of the few adventurers working in the forge was Renaissance- a level-90 guardian making good use of her blacksmith subclass. She was working away on a grinding wheel; just a few percentage points away from making her longsword like new again.

It had taken a little while to get the hang of making repairs, after all, they don't teach blacksmithing in most high schools. Thankfully, the game seemed to know this. Her hands had a mind of their own once she stepped up to the equipment, putting years of in-game blacksmithing experience to good use.

Lying at her feet was a flawlessly repaired and brilliantly polished set of jet-black plate armour. Lying just behind her, and bored out of her mind, was a level-90 sorcerer who had been accompanying her for the last several years of in-game adventures. Her name was Chaco.

The plan hadn't been for her to sit around and watch Renee work- normally they would have had the armour insta-repaired by an NPC- but all the People of the Land seemed just as baffled by the apocalypse as the adventurers were, so, waiting it was. Chaco was lying flat on her back, wearing an archmage's cloak that was almost comically big on her. In-game she was only 5 feet tall, but that was still taller than she was in real life. Sensing that Renee was almost finished, Chaco decided it was time to start bugging her.

"Honey!" She began in her best (but still objectively terrible) Samuel L. Jackson impersonation, "Where's my super-suit!?"

Renee knew the drill. "_Why _do you _need_ to know!?"

"You tell me where my suit is woman-" Chaco continued, skipping a few lines, "We are talking about the _greater good!"_

"_Greater good?_" Renee spun around with as snap, her hip thrust out to one side, "I am your _wife._ I am the greatest good you are _ever _gonna get." She recited flawlessly.

Both girls laughed at themselves as Renee started to strap on her armour.

"How do you _do _that?" Chaco could barely stop herself from laughing.

"One of the perks of being a black woman." Renee threw back with a shrug.

"-and the other perks?"

"That's a good question..." Renee muttered under her breath.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"Oh, I know." Chaco raised an eyebrow and patted her chest.

"Pfft, what're you talking about?"

"You _know_ what I'm talking about." Chaco shot back with a wink.

Renee rolled her eyes- she had intentionally made a flat-chested character after it became obvious that the game developers had no idea how to make plate armour look good on women. More often than not, high-level armour would look like spandex on the exaggerated female models, and while that was fine- or even preferred- among certain elements of the playerbase, Renee couldn't take herself seriously when her character was pulled out of a _Dead or Alive _game.

"I think that's just because you were comparing them to yourself." Renee added with a smirk.

Chaco gasped in mock-dejection. "Renee, how could you? I'm _very_ sensitive about that kind of thing."

"Bullshit."

"Shut up-" Chaco switched back into overacting mode: "My whole life… My whole life I've struggled with my disability- But yesterday I got a fresh start."

"I don't think that counts as a disability."

"Maybe not." Chaco shrugged, apparently finished with the histrionics "But now you can move me to Milford and call me Team 67 'cause I am –H- -O- -T- HOT!" Chaco spun around in her comically oversized cloak and stuck the corniest pose she could.

Renee did all she could to keep herself from laughing; Chaco looked more like a kid wearing an adult's costume than a proper adventurer. She shook her head as she tightened the straps on her cuirass. "Even when we're living in Elder Tale, we still can't escape the FRC jokes…"

"Robotics is love; Robotics is life." Chaco echoed with a grin.

"Right…" Renee muttered, trying to figure out how the metal plates for her arms attached over her chainmail sleeves. Putting on armour is a lot easier in theory than it is in practice.

"You know…" Chaco began, tapping her foot, "Most people would wear something a little more comfortable than armour when wandering around town."

"Well, I'm not most people." Renee traded a smirk with Chaco. "Face it, if you had some Phantasm armour you'd show it off everywhere too."

She wanted to argue, but frankly, Renee was right. Renee's Armour of the Last Crusade (as it was called in-game) looked fantastic. It wasn't the over-the top ornamental armour you normally found in fantasy games: black chainmail was visible in the sizable gaps between the plates of armour, and the whole set was unadorned except for a faint silver trim tracing the edge of the cuirass and spaulders. There was a sort of minimalist beauty to it; the polished black plates shone like obsidian, and the blood-red logo of The East Roebuck Company blended in as if the devs had put it there themselves.

A guardian couldn't ask for a better companion- the armour gave excellent defensive stats to its wearer, but without the cost to offensive abilities that normally comes along with heavy armour. Renee capitalized on the extra offense by investing heavily in skills that granted knockbacks and stuns as a function of damage dealt. This gave her some pretty ridiculous crowd-control abilities in large fights since displacement abilities both pushed enemies away from allies and pulled them towards Renee thanks to their massive aggro values.

Normally, such a game-breaking armour set would have fetched a massive price on the market, but the developers had different ideas. The armour became locked to Renee after she picked it up- making it untradeable and unequipable on anyone else. Everyone found that a little ironic, given that the flavour text said that there was a fanatical cult hunting for it.

"Chaco? … Chaco!" Renee snapped twice to get her attention, almost done putting the armour on. "You've been standing there staring at me for like five minutes."

"Huh? Oh, sorry." Chaco shrugged, "Just spaced out for a sec there… kinda wish I had some phantasm gear as well."

"It's not _that_ big of a deal. Besides, level-100 production gear is probably going to have better stats than this- once we start getting level-cap blacksmiths and materials that is..." Renee smirked as she pulled the last strap on her greaves taut. "Even then, Kat'll probably still make me wear it- free advertising and all."

Chaco stuck her tongue out at Renee. Phantasm-class items were one-of-a-kind and extremely rare. Only about 5,000 had been released on the North American Server in the game's 20-year history- and most of them were either on inactive accounts or too low-leveled to be useful- so wearing one was sure to turn heads. So of course The Company made sure that its logo was plastered for all those onlookers to see.

"Well, whatever." Chaco stretched her legs after several hours of sitting. "You good to go? Might as well get back to the Guild Hall a bit early and see if Miggy's back."

"You just want to sample K's food before he's finished-"

"-Before he burns it." Chaco corrected. "That rice-thing he tried to do yesterday was actually pretty good… About ten minutes before he served it…"

Renee chuckled, starting the walk back to The Guild Hall. "You know, all things considered you can do a lot worse than having a culinary student for a Chef. Hell, half the city still hasn't realized that you can cook real food."

"That must be why everyone's so down." Chirped Chaco with a smile.

_Yeah, being stuck in a video game has nothing to do with it…_ "Right. That's definitely it."

"I'm serious you know." It was like a switch had flipped- Chaco went into full-on MBA mode, and added a bit of a skip to her walk. "We're sitting at the start of what economists call a virtuous cycle. Given that Chef is a fairly unpopular subclass, demand for good food will far exceed the supply, driving up the price of food. Once that happens, people will be forced to forage for more gold in order to purchase proper food. That'll wear down their equipment, and all sorts of crafting classes will get work in order to repair that equipment- leading to more spending power- leading to more food, to more demand, and on and on."

"Easy now Chaco-" Renee stifled a laugh. "I'm not even an engineer yet, don't start with all this econ stuff."

Chaco groaned and spun around to face Renee. "This isn't even proper econ, it's just high school stuff- besides- Kettering makes you guys take econ too right?"

"They do, just remember that freshman econ was three years ago for me; it was only last year for you."

"Sounds like an excuse to me…" Chaco pouted. "All I'm saying is that it doesn't have to be this way…"

"Is that your head or your heart talking?"

"It can be both you know." The two girls rounded the block and headed towards the gardens that took the place of Millennium Park.

_Whatever._ Renee thought to herself. _That's a problem for Kat, my job is just to keep you guys alive._

Renee was debating how to lighten the mood when she noticed a cluster of familiar-looking players walking the path from The Cathedral to The Guild Building. "That's… That's Karl, isn't it?" She already knew the answer when she asked. Between the massive two-handed battleaxe, head-to-toe chainmail, and flowing green cape, there wasn't much of a question.

Chaco squinted off at the distant group of matching green capes. "Y- Yeah… What the hell?" Chaco spun around to face Renee "I thought they were having a guild leader meeting. They can't do it without Karl- The Hussars are one of the biggest guilds in the city."

Karl was the bombastic leader of The Huron Hussars- The only all-Michigan guild in Elder Tale, and the one that took charge of organizing the state's players for PvP events. Prior to the 2014 expansion, guilds in Elder Tale had been fairly ad hoc; small groups would gradually merge into larger and larger guilds. However, with the release of state-vs.-state competitions, the whole guild scene changed as high-level players wanted to get as competitive as possible in the new PvP events. Combat guilds (or at least the large ones) shifted from being a hodgepodge of players with common goals to large, geographically-segregated armies.

There were certainly some problems with that model- the state nationalism (whether ironic or unironic) led to a lot of unnecessary animosity between players when there was an event coming up. But on the other hand, lumping people together almost at random had its upsides. New players had an easy time connecting with older players since they were going to be fighting on the same side at some point anyways, and a lot of the elitism and exclusivity that accompanied high-level guilds disappeared. Also, since being in a combat guild only really mattered once a month, guild members would regularly reach out and form parties or raid teams with members outside their guild- a rare sight in pre-2014 Elder Tale.

Renee ran over the raid again in her head. "Karl was leading the dungeon team… The Emperor has a lot of health, but I don't think Karl died in the fight-"

"Pfft- That's a first." Chaco scoffed. Karl's kamikaze Pirate build was notorious for its short life-expectancy. "…Think we should tell Kat and Chaucer that he's back in town?"

Renee shrugged. "No reason to interrupt their meeting." _Besides- Karl probably came back on their request._ "It's almost four-o-clock anyways. I doubt they'll get anything done that they haven't already."

_Actually, they probably planned that. _Renee thought to herself as she started the long walk to The Guild Building. _No one could make decisions without Karl, but it gave everyone a chance to figure out who was calling the conference and why. _Renee smiled to herself. _Typical Kat…_

"What're you so smiley about?" Chaco asked with a smirk of her own.

"Nothing- I'm just looking forward to dinner."

"I know right." Chaco's eyes lit up and she started to do a little half-skip as she walked. It was way too easy to get the girl exited. "It's gonna be dinner of the champions; celebrating victory over the corpses of our slaughtered enemies." Chaco gave her best mock-maniacal laugh.

"It's not _their _corpses we're celebrating over- if anything it's ours." Renee had to do a quick double-take. "…That is the strangest thing I have ever said."

Chaco laughed "Get used to it. Something tells me we're only getting started."

She was right.


End file.
